A Canterbury Tale for a Kent wedding photographer

September 10, 2010

I shot a wedding in July in Canterbury that again utilised a lot of off-camera flash because of the changing weather, so here are some brief notes about how the day unfolded at the Dog Inn in Wingham near Canterbury.

Kate & Lee are a great couple who I knew would let me try out a few things to make their pictures special, We had already discussed at the final consultation meeting at the venue (I say meeting – it was a nice chat over a pint!) that if time and weather allowed they would like a funny picture in their couple shots.

The weather forecast was a mixture of showers and dry spells. Now for the record, overcast is fine because you get great skin tones and you can fix your metering. Not so good is you want skies in the shots somewhere. Sunlight is ok as long as you place people in the shade and use fill light or shoot into the sun so that it becomes a powerful backlight (avoiding lens flare along the way). When you have a mixture of sunshine and showers you have to constantly change (potentially) the exposure settings. This is most obvious when the sun is behind them out of the clouds every minute or so. Sometimes a quick way around this when doing say groups or portraits is to fix your aperture and shutter speed but change the ISO 1 stop as the clouds come and go.

The bride’s prep room was very dark but I wanted some natural light pictures – so the available window light becomes my softbox and I “embrace the ISO” at 800 and get out the monopod for the slow shutter speeds.

Some harsh directional light appeared as the clouds passed so the ratio between light and dark areas outside went beyond a nice 2:1. In this situation you’re either torn between exposing for highlights or shadows, filling the shadows or waiting for your subject to get out of the sun.

The sun didn’t last long so we look the couple across the road and had two speedlights on stands so that the ushers would hold them like poles. The available light was flat in the shade so the speedlights created the contrast, triggers by pocketwizards as I was some distance away across the busy road.

We finished with some fun and relaxed family groups pictures in the car park! For more information about Kent weddings photography please see www.timstubbings.co.uk The next wedding course is in Canterbury on October 24th – please so to the TRAINING section of timstubbings.co.uk or drop me a line at photo@timstubbings.co.uk!